With the end of the summer holidays and the arrival of autumn, the debate on workplace absenteeism will return. One of the highlights will be the white paper that at the end of this month (it could be the 28th or the 29th) Foment del Treball plans to present, and which is being prepared by a group of experts. The group is headed by Jordi García Viña, who is a professor of labor law, as coordinator and president; and the rest are Fernando Casado, who is the president of Asepeyo; Pedro Pablo Sanz, who is the director general of the association of mutual insurance companies, Amat; Daniel Torró, CEO of Geseme, dedicated to occupational risk prevention; Antonio Salas, who is a great specialist from Madrid, within Amat; the lawyer Manel Silva and Yesika Aguilar, who is the director of labor resources at Foment.

All advances and new technologies generate concern and fear. We have seen this throughout history. And this is what is happening with artificial intelligence (AI). There are many studies pointing to the loss of hundreds or thousands of jobs, and the potential of this new technology is still in its infancy. But we have already seen many headlines like that of the weekly The Economist a few days ago, "The jobs apocalypse". The impact it can have cannot be denied, and not just on repetitive and low-value-added tasks.

As always when a new technology or advance emerges, with great changes and increasingly accelerated (radio, television, internet...), the stages are burned out faster and faster. And there are fears about the impact on the labor market. It has started to happen with artificial intelligence (AI), the big current issue. Several studies, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), among others, have analyzed it. Some are more apocalyptic than others, but, in any case, AI is already an argument to reduce staff and gain more margins and profitability.